We all know that .NET provides us rich set tools for us. Calendar control is one of them. We can simply use the calendar control for date input. But it is more powerful and we can simply create a complete application using calendar control which shows the tasks that have been scheduled.

To use the calendar control in a such way we should have to know about, how the calendar control is rendered in the HTML. Calendar control is rendered in as a table in HTML and every day is rendered in the order.

And calendar control provides a DayRender event as well. That’s enough for us to create the application.

Simply drag drop the calendar control inside your ASP.NET page. Make it big enough to fit to the screen.

And put the code behind as described here. I hardcoded the tasks in a HashTable but if you want, you can keep them in a data source.

In the Page_Load we load some data into the HashTable. This scenario may vary based on where you keep your data source. (As I mentioned earlier here it is simply hard coded).

DayRender method is triggered for each day that is rendered for the month. First in the if condition we check whether the rendered date is in the HashTable. Here we are providing the key and check whether value of the key is null or not. If it is not null then the key is available in the HashTable so a task has been assigned on that day.

Then we proceed inside the if condition.

We create a Literal control and make gives the text as <br/> (I don’t need to explain this as we all know why ?) And I add the Literal Control to the specific cell of the calendar control. (because as I explained earlier calendar control is rendered as a table in HTML)

Then I add a Label and feed the task of that particular day. Here DayRenderEventArgs object is very useful in getting the rendered day.

The above is simple and yet powerful. 🙂